by Jack Du Brul
“There are a few dozen conservation groups who’d disagree with you,” demurred Mercer.
She made a face. “Most of whom are so misguided they don’t think we even need raw materials. Like I said there’s a balance and I believe that on this issue your views parallel mine. I know you’ve refused jobs that others greedily took because you felt the damage far outweighed the benefit.”
“Or maybe they weren’t offering enough money,” Mercer countered, just to hear her reaction.
“You’re being disingenuous.”
He grinned. “Okay, you found my dirty little secret. I’m not a corporate money grubber after all.”
Tisa’s eyes sparkled with mischief. “I wouldn’t go that far. How about a money grubber with a heart?”
The rest of the day passed in a sweet blur of meandering strolls and aimless conversations. They blocked out everything but themselves and the perfection of the island. For Mercer only one thing marred the day. It seemed that ten times an hour Tisa would ask him the time. She did not wear the watch he’d given her, which he didn’t mind, but her obsession with time was something he couldn’t understand.
They were sitting on a quiet beach on the eastern coast of Santorini when she asked yet again and he told her it was quarter of five. She bit her lip, her gaze fixed on the horizon. Mercer knew that their idyllic escape was at an end.
“We have to go,” she said sadly. “It’s almost time for you to see your proof.” She placed her hands on each side of Mercer’s face. “I want you to know that today was the most enjoyable I’ve had in a long time. I can forget so much when I’m with you.”
“Tell me what’s so horrible that you have to forget, Tisa.”
She released him and got to her feet, brushing sand from her backside. “You’ll know in a little while.”
They found a taxi in the village of Monolithos and negotiated a fare back to Fira to pick up their luggage and take them to the city’s main dock south of town. The road hugged the cliff and descended to sea level in a dizzying string of switchbacks. The narrow tract was clogged with trucks climbing up from the dock. The vehicles were laden with produce and supplies that kept the island habitable. Teens on rented motorcycles darted between the trucks and tore up the road, their whining exhaust echoing off the mountains. The driver cursed one particular biker who came around a blind curve in his lane as he overtook a lumbering ten-wheeled truck. The silver bike juked back into his own lane with inches to spare.
Tisa turned to Mercer. “I read that at the height of the tourist season there’s a motorcycle accident every day on Santorini and a death at least once a week.”
“To a kid only old people are mortal.”
They rounded another curve and could see the open dock far below. Beyond ranks of shipping containers a ferry even larger and older than the one that had brought Mercer here disgorged a stream of cars and trucks while an equally long line of vehicles waited their turn to board. The double-ended ferry had the battered appearance of a veteran New York taxicab. Her paintwork had been faded by years in the fierce sun and she had fared poorly in her fight against the tough Aegean storms. Her lines were boxy and blunt and her flanks were deeply scarred by careless captains who used her bulk in port to push aside other craft.
Because her forward loading ramp gaped open, she reminded Mercer of a bloated fish trapped on a beach and gasping for air.
“Looks like they’re running late,” he said.
“What time is it?”
“What does it matter? It’ll take a half hour to load all those cars.”
“Please.”
“It’s six fifteen.”
Tisa ticked off on her fingers as she made a mental calculation. She let out a relieved breath. “We’ll be okay as long as we’re not too late shoving off.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Proof, dear doctor. Your proof.”
Tisa had to pay the cabbie because last night Mercer had given the hundred dollars’ worth of drachmas to the couple that ran the restaurant as appreciation for the sumptuous meal.
“So where are we going?” he asked as they joined the line of people at the amidships passenger ramp loading.
“I think the ferry’s next port of call is Crete, but I’m not sure.”
The vague answer made little sense to Mercer. “You don’t know where this proof of yours is?”
“Oh, it’s right here on Santorini, but the best way to see it is from a distance.”
On board, Mercer and Tisa stashed their meager luggage in one of the coin-operated storage bins outside a shabby middeck cafeteria. Tisa kept a single bag and Mercer asked to stash his pistol in it so he didn’t have to wear his sports coat. The day had been a hot one and inside the ship the press of humanity already made sweat ooze from his pores.
Tisa bought several bottled waters in the cafeteria and said enigmatically, “We might need them later.”
They climbed to the top deck and found a space at the ship’s rail shaded by one of the smoke-darkened funnels. Twenty minutes later the ferry’s horn gave a great mournful blast as the vehicle door was secured and lines cast off. She eased from her slip with ponderous dignity, and as soon as she felt waves broadside she started to roll like an overweight woman on uneven pavement. Just a few dozen yards from the black cliffs that reflected the last of the day’s heat like mirrors, the air was much cooler, freshened by the trade winds blowing past the island.
Tisa set her bag at her feet and rummaged through it until she found what she wanted. She handed the bundle to Mercer. It was a book wrapped in stiff waterproofed canvas. The volume was leather bound and ancient; the binding crackled as he opened it.
“You are the first person outside the Order to ever see one of our chronicles.” She gazed at the book with reverence.
“What is this?” Mercer scanned a brittle parchment page but couldn’t read the words, or even recognize the language.
“For almost two hundred years the monks and villagers from Rinpoche-La and later others who became part of us have left the mountain redoubt in order to verify the predictions made about the earth’s chi forces. Each person carried a journal like this to write observations about the event.”
The words “event” and “predictions” sent a chill down Mercer’s spine as he finally understood what Tisa had been saying all along. “You’re talking about earthquakes?”
“Yes,” she said somberly, “and volcanic eruptions too.”
“No one can predict earthquakes.” Mercer shook his head. “It’s impossible.”
“Which is why I didn’t tell you the truth that night in Las Vegas. You would have thought me more insane than I probably seemed. Admit it. Had I said we could predict earthquakes you never would have agreed to meet me. I had to get you here so I could show you proof.”
“This book isn’t proof, Tisa.”
“What time is it?”
“Quarter of seven.” And then he got it, what Tisa meant by proof. He felt breathless. “My God, we’re here to watch an earthquake.”
“According to the original journal entry it should have hit the island two days ago at noon. I said last night that ever since the Tunguska blast the oracle’s predictions have been off. The new calculations say it should hit in about twenty minutes.” She took the book back from him and opened to one of the latter pages. She handed it back. Mercer couldn’t read the faded script so he concentrated on the numbers written along the side of the page. One he saw was the date two days past and others he recognized as longitude and latitude coordinates. Tisa then gave him a modern tourist map. Santorini was circled and he saw that the coordinates matched exactly.
“When was this written?” Mercer whispered, still unable to fully grasp the implications.
“In 1850,” she answered. “This particular chronicle is of seismic activity around the Mediterranean. There are others for the other parts of the planet. If you’d like I can show you where it mentions the Izmit, Turkey, quake
that hit in 1999 and killed so many, or the cycles of Mount Etna’s eruptions.”
“You knew about these events before they happened?”
She nodded. “The journals are kept by a council of archivists and were only given to watchers a short time before an eruption or earthquake, just long enough for them to get there so they could report their findings. Over the past twenty years, as the media has become globalized and the Internet has grown, the council has stopped sending watchers because news reaches Rinpoche-La on its own.
“We do have groups around the world, members who don’t know the full scope of our prognostication. They provide details if we need them to help us correct the time differences that cropped up in the prophecy since 1908.”
“Jesus, Tisa, if an earthquake is about to strike the island we have to warn people, we can’t let them die.”
Mercer launched himself from the railing. Tisa had to race to grab his arm before he descended down to the lower deck to find someone to take him to the captain. “Relax. The oracle says the quake is a small one. I would never put you in danger.”
“How small?” he asked dubiously.
“Just enough to rattle some windows and panic a few cats.” She smiled.
“But the others, like the one that struck Turkey? Why didn’t you send out a warning? My God, you could have saved thousands of lives.”
She shook her head. “It is forbidden. I told you, only the archivists have access to the chronicles and only they understand how the oracle works. Because watchers aren’t really needed anymore, we never learn what the oracle had said until after it happens. We then verify the prophecy in order to determine if our efforts to correct the chi imbalance have had an effect. I’m not supposed to have this book,” she admitted in a soft, remorseful voice. “I stole it from the archive so I could convince you.”
She suddenly became angry. “This is what has caused the schism within the Order. Some of us feel that it is our duty to humanity to tell the world what we know. Others, like those that tried to kill you at the Luxor, take a harder line and want to remain in the shadows. They don’t even believe we should actively try to correct the growing chi disparity.”
“That’s how you knew about the experiment,” Mercer said, more to himself than her. “Those quakes that hit in Washington and near Reno hadn’t been predicted, had they? They were triggered somehow by Dr. Marie’s experiment.”
“After they happened, it sent the archivists into a panic because the chronicle said there wouldn’t be any activity in those areas for many months. This was something far beyond the previous imbalances we’d detected before. Something severe had occurred. Something we had never seen before. They dispatched several teams to the United States to discover the cause. Some felt certain that the oracle was no longer reliable.”
“What is the oracle?”
“I’ve only seen it once, when I was a child, but-”
The rumble came from all around them, a vibration that built in their bodies before it became a sound that reached their ears. It was low on the register, a bass that struck in a continuous wave. Several passengers lining the rail to watch the island in the twilight looked at each other in confusion. The moment stretched. A woman screamed as the sea puckered under the seismic onslaught of a mild earthquake. A few rocks dislodged from the massif ringing the caldera and tumbled to the water. The splashes looked like torpedo strikes against the base of the bluffs. Flocks of birds took wing all over Santorini and seemed to further darken the sky.
And then the quake subsided, the sound fading even faster than it had grown. An uneasy buzz flew through the passengers, a few looked sickly pale, a few dismissed the moment with nervous laughter.
Mercer remained rooted in place, his knuckles white on the steel railing, the line of his mouth grim. Even before it had struck, Mercer knew Tisa hadn’t made up her story. She hadn’t lied about a single thing and the implications were beyond belief. The best minds in science, experts in geo-mechanics and fluid dynamics and other branches of geology, had been working for years to give citizens a few hours’ notice of an impending quake. Their efforts had failed miserably. They couldn’t give even a moment’s warning. And now here he stood with a centuries-old book that gave the exact time and place of an earthquake, a feat of prediction he couldn’t possibly explain. He was overcome by superstitious awe but also the thrill of the potential. He had to understand. He had to learn everything Tisa knew about the oracle.
As he turned to face her a figure striding across the crowded deck caught his eye. It took him a fraction of a second to understand who he was seeing, place him in context and react to the threat. He dropped the journal and tore at Tisa’s hand at the same instant the person closing in on them realized he’d been spotted.
Donny “the Handle” Randall shot Mercer a wolfish grin and reached under the left arm of his windbreaker.
Tisa glanced over her shoulder as Mercer pulled her from the rail. She didn’t recognize the big man who accelerated after them, but behind him was someone she did know, her brother, Luc. Her heart tripped like she’d just been shocked. In the stark illumination of the deck lights she saw the glow of a knife held flat against his leg.
At the top of the stairs leading into the ship, Mercer shouldered aside a pack of German students coming up from the cafeteria. Pitchers of beer went flying. One of the drunker ones cursed him and took an awkward swing at Mercer’s head. The blow missed and the kid punched one of his own friends, sending him down the metal stairway. Someone shouted and a panic began to radiate from the epicenter of the altercation. The surge of passengers slowed Randall’s rush across the deck.
“Give me my gun,” Mercer called as he dragged Tisa down the clogged stairs.
“It’s in my bag on deck!”
He gave her hand a squeeze as if to say that it wasn’t important while furiously thinking how to get out of this trap. No doubt Donny had backup. The slender guy behind him looked like he was part of Randall’s team. There would be others, too. They’d come after him with a half dozen men in Vegas, believing he would be trapped in his room. On board the ferry where he really was trapped they’d probably double the size of their team to be certain they got him.
At the bottom of the stairs was an open mezzanine stretching the width of the ship. Sickly potted palms lined the walls. To the left and right were corridors leading to cabins and passenger lounges. The whole area was jammed with people, some leaning against the walls or sitting on their luggage, others just milling around. A steady stream of passengers passed through the cafeteria doors. While no one paid him and Tisa any special interest, he knew Randall’s backup was coming. A second set of stairs across the mezzanine ascended to the top deck. Donny would expect Mercer to hide amid the twisting interior corridors, not double back, so he led Tisa up the stairs before Donny and the man with him could see where they were heading.
Back in the cooling breeze Mercer realized his body was bathed in sweat, although his breathing remained steady and his heart had slowed after the initial shock of seeing Randall on board. He cut through the crowd and scooped up Tisa’s bag from where she’d left it. Once the familiar heft of the Beretta was in his hand, he felt the odds had evened slightly.
The lights of Santorini were mere pricks against the darkening horizon. Between the ferry and the island, a white motor yacht seemed to be keeping pace with them, hanging a mere thirty yards or so from the side of the ship. Mercer doubted its presence was a coincidence. He looked beyond the cabin cruiser at the receding island. Estimating distance at night was notoriously difficult but he judged the island was too far away to swim to. They had to get off the ferry, and if they were to survive they needed a boat. The ship’s life rafts were inflatable and capable of carrying forty people. Each was encased in bulbous fiberglass capsules. Mercer briefly examined the complex tangle of wires and pulleys that launched them and knew he’d never get one overboard in the minutes he had before Randall found him on deck.
“
What are we going to do?” Tisa’s eyes were wide with fright, but not for herself. Her half brother would never hurt her. She feared for Mercer.
With Tisa in tow he took off toward the ferry’s bow. “When we came aboard, I noticed a big chest near the gangway. The label said it contained a six-man inflatable. If we can get to it we can get off this tub.”
They cut past a circle of students ringing a young woman playing guitar and were a dozen paces from another stairway when a pair of men in matching nylon windbreakers came around a ventilator stack. Mercer paused for an instant, judging angles and distances, mindful of the passengers farther forward.
The gunmen gave no such thought. Automatic pistols appeared from under their jackets and the first shots exploded across the open deck. Amid the screams of panic from the teens behind Mercer came the higher keen of an injured woman. He dropped to the deck, shoving Tisa to the side, and fired intentionally above the gunmen to avoid hitting anyone on the far side. The assassins ducked out of view, giving him precious seconds to roll out of their line of fire.
The crowds still lingering at the rails had started a headlong stampede off the top deck. One person ended up going over the rail and into the black water below. Mercer and Tisa became caught in the tide of fleeing bodies, fighting to stay on their feet as the mass of people half ran, half fell down a staircase.
Once through the bottleneck of the stairs, the crowd spread. Mercer and Tisa lost the cover they provided. Just a few feet away, another pair of men wearing the same windbreakers were studying faces, searching for their quarry. This time Mercer didn’t hesitate. He hammered the first with the butt of his pistol, a savage blow to the back of his head that dropped the gunman instantly. The second was angled away from the crowd enough for Mercer to ram the Beretta into his gut and pull the trigger without worrying about the bullet’s follow-through.
The shot was muffled by the man’s body, but not enough to prevent another stampede. An alert crewman hit the fire alarm and its piercing shriek added to the din. Mercer fought against the flow of the crowd, shoving and punching a path until breaking clear into a corridor.